This image shows only the swells directed at Ironwood Beach that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical June. It is based on 2786 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens.

The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NNW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the E. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 2% of the time, equivalent to 1 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to arise in a normal June. Taking into account the ratio of these swells that coincided with expected offshore winds we calculate that clean surf can be found at Ironwood Beach about 2% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 15% of the time. This is means that we expect 5 days with waves in a typical June, of which 1 days should be clean enough to surf.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.